Work through the levels. Reveal the Spangram only when you’re truly ready.
Today’s clue: “That can't be right”
A gentle direction — no specifics.
Closer — the category is coming into focus.
Near-direct — only read if you’re stuck.
Direction only.
Getting closer.
Near-direct.
5 theme words — lengths in random order
Spaces not counted in total
All theme words — shuffled
These words fit the theme on the surface, but aren’t part of today’s solution. Knowing them ahead of time can save you minutes of searching.
Short, blunt and slangy, it matches the exasperated mood of the clue so well that most solvers try it early.
A folksy, emphatic favourite that sounds tailor-made for this clue, which is exactly why it burns a life or two.
Soft, airy and easy to overlook, it reads like a filler entry that could plausibly sit in this grid.
A curmudgeonly word with a satisfying thud, it feels thematically adjacent long before you check the letters.
a textbook decoy
The 4.5 comes down to one mechanism: the clue is a reaction rather than a definition, so the first word you find tends to set the register for everything else. Spotting RUBBISH or NONSENSE in the grid reframes the whole search — suddenly you're hunting for other terms of the same dismissal, and BALDERDASH, DRIVEL and HOOEY drop into place almost automatically. HOOEY is the outlier, a five-letter cartoon word with an odd double-vowel shape that most solvers only recognise by ear, so it usually turns up late and by accident. UNBELIEVABLE, the spangram, is comparatively easy to guess but demands commitment: it's 12 letters, and you have to trust the theme before you'll trace something that long across the board. The real subtlety is that none of these words are common in writing — they live in speech, which is why the set is recognised by feel rather than by dictionary recall.
"That can't be right" isn't a definition at all — it's the sentence you blurt out a half-second before reaching for a word like RUBBISH or BALDERDASH. The clue is written from the solver's side of the conversation, playing the part of someone refusing to accept what they've just heard, which is precisely the mood UNBELIEVABLE captures as the spangram. It's a lovely bit of misdirection: the phrase reads like a complaint about the puzzle itself, when really it's a live demonstration of the theme.
What's elegant here is that the puzzle never bothers with the thing being dismissed — no rumour, no excuse, no tall tale appears in the grid. The editor stripped the category down to pure vocabulary: five interchangeable words for the dismissal itself, plus a spangram that supplies the reaction rather than the label. That choice raises the difficulty, because no concrete noun anchors a guess, and it's what makes the set feel like a conversation rather than a glossary.
